HON Initiatives & Services: the Hunts Projects

The Hunt projects are based on a flexible search engine to a specific domain (MedHunt, 2DHunt, BioHunt, PACSHunt, HON index, ExPASy index) using the databases created by way of MARVIN

Six active applications are already in use: medical (MedHunt), a version for searching 2-D electrophoresis documents (2DHunt), a molecular biology version (BioHunt), a version for searching documents related to the PACS (Picture Archiving Computer System) and two versions for searching Web sites content (the HON Foundation and ExPASy, the proteomics server). With these six applications, MARVIN is an ideal way to customize any specific search of Internet-based information.

MedHunt - Medical Document Hunter

MedHunt is our dedicated medical full-text search engine, using a global database including anotated and auto-indexed Web sites retrieved by MARVIN, the HON's robot .

MARVIN uses a purpose-built medical dictionary of 20,000 words plus the 33,000 Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) from the National Library of Medicine, U.S.A. to retrieve automatically the unreviewed sites. Each word has been given a weight describing its relevance and specificity in documents for health and medicine. The weightings have been obtained by performing a statistical evaluation of all words contained in a preselected set of 1,000 medical documents.

MARVIN searches the Web and selects only documents that are relevant to the health and medical fields. Document relevance is computed according to a formula that takes into consideration the number of words from the medical dictionary that are found in the document, as well as their associated weights.

Selected documents are stored in MedHunt's global database which is organized in four categories; a general one including all the health/medical web sites and the three others dedicated respectively to the hospitals, support groups and conferences. MedHunt also proposes a simultaneous translation of the queries in eight languages (English, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish) with a pre-formatted search associated with the translations.

2D Hunt - 2-D electrophoresis Hunter

2DHunt [1] is a 2-D electrophoresis search engine. The 2-D electrophoresis database was also built by MARVIN using, this time, a dictionary limited to this domain. 2DHunt has been created by ^HON* for the ExPASy Molecular Biology Server of the Geneva University Hospital and the University of Geneva [].

BioHunt [] is a molecular biology search engine. BioHunt is devoted to discovering molecular biology information on the Internet. The molecular biology database was built by MARVIN [] using a dictionary (3,000 words) limited to this domain. BioHunt was created by HON^* for the ExPASy Molecular Biology Server of the Geneva University Hospital and the University of Geneva [].

PACSHunt - Picture Archiving Computarised System Hunter

PACSHunt [] interogates the database of world-wide Web site links related to the PACS created by MARVIN. PACSHunt has been developed by ^HON* for the Medical Informatics Division of the Geneva University Hospital [].

HON index [] is the local search engine of the Health On the Net Web site. The database, also indexed by MARVIN, includes all the content of the HON Foundation Web server.

] is a local search engine. The database, also indexed by way of MARVIN, includes all the contents of ExPASy Molecular Biology Server of the Geneva University Hospital and the University of Geneva [].

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last modified: Feb 15 2011